Episode 10


		EPISODE 10: NEW BEST FRIEND
		A lunchtime meeting between the Nguyen cousins has Jason worried about his sister's involvement with Tomeka Taft. Is Julie's friendship with Tomeka something she's imagining? And a meeting between school nurse and Varsity coach, behind Andy Kinsella's back, may have his ears burning.
		Julie Nguyen put a peach Snapple on the plastic tray, next to the tuna melt that was today's "special."
		It was so hypocritical, she thought, the way Ansonborough's nutritionist hung all these lame posters all over the walls about eating right, about low-calorie snacks, about fighting teen obesity with diet and exercise ... and yet the lunch special was always something that was 600 calories minimum. She had to admit that she was starved, however. After losing her appetite when she was called to the principal's office to talk to Tomeka Taft's father - how weird was that? - she had nabbed her cousin Jason in the hall between classes and told him that she wanted to have lunch with him - something they almost never did together. She couldn't wait to tell him what had happened. "Julie!" she heard Jason's deep, booming voice holler, from across the cafeteria. She looked in her cousin's direction and made her way through the crowd, the Snapple bottle sliding around on the slick tray so that it almost landed on the floor twice. Finally, she reached Jason's table - he'd grabbed a small one in the corner. "What's the big deal? Something wrong?" he said to her, emptying a ketchup-packet onto a well-done burger from the school's new "short-order grill" counter - Ansonborough was desperately trying to do things to keep kids on campus during lunch hour. Jason thought they were doing a pretty good job at competing with McDonald's, at least in the burger department. The fries sucked, though.
		"You will NOT believe this," Julie said excitedly, sliding her knapsack off her shoulders and then under her seat. She sat down, tore the paper off the plastic straw on her tray, plunged it into the tiny carton of skim milk, and sipped.
		She swallowed hard. "Yuck. Okay. So I'm sitting in homeroom and a monitor comes in. Mr. Meachem turns to me and says I have to go down to Principal McAllister." "What?" Jason said, chewing with a mouthful of burger. "What did you -" "Wait, will you!" Julie commanded. "So I get down there and my best friend Tomeka Taft's father is sitting there. Something has totally happened, and they want to talk to me. I'm like, to myself, What is this about?" "Hold it. Since when is Tomeka Taft your best friend?" "Since, like, forever, Jason." "But she's a Junior, isn't she? You're like -" "It's not about age. We've gotten very close."
				Jason sensed that his cousin was deluding herself - in fact, flattering herself, since Tomeka was extremely cool and popular, and Julie was, well, extremely NOT.
		"So what's the punchline? What had happened?" Jason said, looking more intently at his lunch than at his cousin. "You want my pickles?"
		"Totally," Julie said, reaching over and scarfing the limp, green pickle slices on Jason's plate. "Need my greens." "So what had happened?" Jason repeated. "Well, there was this car accident last night on I-75 and Tomeka was in it. And she is SO in trouble..." "Is she okay?" Jason asked, for a split second not chewing. "Yeah, she's okay. Scraped up a little bit, I guess. Cut on her forehead - stitches. It was a really serious accident, though. But the weird part is that Tomeka was with these guys she wasn't supposed to be out with, and after the accident happened they like dumped her at the emergency room at the hospital." "What do you mean they dumped her?" Jason said. "I mean they like dumped her. After the accident happened, the car was - what was the word Mr. Taft used - drivable, so they just went to Grady emergency room, and dropped her in the parking lot and sped off. Can you believe it?"
		"And where do you come in?" Jason asked, concerned about his naïve cousin's sudden involvement in something that sounded fishy at best. Julie forked into her tuna melt and stuffed a hunk into her mouth, and continued to speak. "Where I come in, Jason, is that Tomeka tried to call me from the emergency room. She did NOT want to call her father, so she gave the nurse my name and number, and said that I was her best friend. I wasn't there - I could kill myself, I was at Cobb Galleria seeing this lame movie and running into Mrs. Stringfellow - so Tomeka finally had to call her father." "Whoa," Jason said, "so you're suddenly Tomeka Taft's best friend? What's up with that? And P.S., I still don't get why you were called to the Principal's office." "Tomeka's dad," she answered him, "is frantically trying to figure out who she was with. Tomeka won't tell him." "Why not?" Jason said, looking at his watch. "Because of who it is, doofus." "So who was she with?" Jason asked. Julie Nguyen sighed. "I don't know. But I'm going over to Grady to visit her after school. And I am SO going to find out."
		Coach Morissette sat at the computer on his desk. As a joke, his wife Laurie had given him a football-strategy software program, but he had recently become obsessed with it. It allowed you to play "What if" games, juggling team placements, and passing & running strategies, while changing variables such as player weight, speed, and skill-level.
		With the Lassiter game looming, he was using every tool at his disposal to be ready. He was so into it that he actually jumped when the knock came at his door and the door opened with a squeak.
		It was Nurse Jenrette, the R.N. who worked not only for Ansonborough but three other schools in the district, as sort of a "circuit health-care professional."
		"Coach? Can I come in?" "Sure. Hi Adele. Anything wrong?" He stood up, his gentlemanly instinct taking over automatically.
		"Don't get up. I just wanted to talk to you about one of your seniors, a Varsity player." Coach Morissette rubbed his hand over his face. "Let me guess. Andy Kinsella?"
		"How did you know?" Adele Jenrette said, genuinely puzzled, sitting down on the chair across from Coach's desk that was usually reserved for athletes getting a talking-to. "Just a hunch," he said. "Is he all right?" "Well," she answered him. "I'm not sure. Frankly, I'm not even sure I should be in here talking to you about it. Professionally speaking." "No," Morissette answered her, "you absolutely should. He's out there playing ball, and the last thing I want is an injury. I had a feeling something was up in his life. But I didn't know it was physical." "That's just it," she said. "I'm not sure that it is."
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